THE WEIGHT OF TWO WORLDS

In between, in this one life, I have the benefit of staying in two worlds. 

1. Nigeria. 

2. Pages of books. 

One cannot write enough about the sweetness of staying and exploring limitless worlds that are only limited by your imagination. “Reading is a magic carpet”, mummy Erika likes to say, “and it takes you to worlds beyond here”. That describes my experience. I enjoy the benefit of sitting under the shade with Job and his 3 friends, arguing and listening to philosophical debates about God, goodness, holiness, evil and pain; I get the benefit of following Yasir Arafat into his life in the middle east as a terrorist and a freedom fighter, via the words of Barry Rubin; some other times, I have the privilege of listening to C.S Lewis preach his sermon “The Weight of Glory” while I sit at the far edge of the church auditorium; on Sunday, I was on the front line of the march to bury the great Abolitionist, William Wilberforce, it was a grand procession to bury a man who spent his parliamentary years advocating for abolition; I’ve been to Queen Victoria’s England, Benjamin Franklin’s America, Albert’s Einstein’s 20th Century, Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Nigeria and Thomas Sankara’s Burkina Faso; I was part of the reformation, I was there when Luther refused to recant his words and I was beside the lines as John Hus was burned at the stake; and yes, I was in the crowd when Martin Luther King Jnr delivered the “I have a dream speech” and I also witnessed as he was shot. All these experiences, though not experiences, are like real things to me. Aren’t they? 

While these experiences are thrilling and amazing, they now appear to be like a curse in my mind. They torment me day and night. For how does one visit America, read of its entire development process and not wish the same for his country? How does one read the story of how China is becoming a global superpower without wishing the same for his country? How does one mesh reality with these experiences? 

So for instance, I’ve been reading Yuval Harari, reading of all the amazing advancements in science and the possible advances of the future but when I take a break to ease myself, I am reminded again that I still do not have constant water supply, I do not have constant electricity and in fact I do not have this book on a hard copy in my part of the world. How comes the world is moving so fast and we are running faster in the opposite direction? I read of the advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and AI and then remember that there are over 2,000 kids in my community who have never used a PC. 

The marriage between reality and the books I live in appears to be impossible. Worse of all, I don’t read fictions. So how on earth does my mind get messed up like this?